1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to casual social games.
2. Technical Background
There are multiple technical challenges facing the designer of computer-implemented games and in creating a fun and compelling game. Three of these challenges can be broadly categorised into the following areas: ‘Engagement’; ‘viralisation’ and ‘monetisation’.
We will look first at ‘engagement’, which involves designing gameplay to be engaging and rewarding to players. This typically requires games to be easily understood at their simplest or introductory levels; providing rewarding gameplay, with quite simple game mechanics, but becoming progressively more challenging so that players are not bored, but remain engaged and develop rewarding skills. Effective engagement requires various forms of feedback to reinforce the player's sense of success and accomplishment. Effective engagement can be greatly magnified if the game has a social aspect—for example if it is linked to a social network so that game players can interact with their friends in the social network. The game can then transform into something that goes far beyond a solo game experience and become more like a shared journey.
‘Viralisation’ requires a game to include various techniques that encourage players to share the game with others; encouraging them to play the game. It is a key technique in enabling mass-scale distribution or penetration of games. Viralisation can be especially effective when the game is integrated into or connected to a social network environment in some manner, so that the game can then propagate through the network of player's friends, and their friends and so on.
‘Monetisation’ covers those techniques that enable revenue to be generated from a game: This involves many challenges, because the monetisation techniques need to be acceptable to players and in no way undermine engagement.
A successful and original game will require a team of game designers to solve complex problems of engagement, viralisation and monetisation: This can take many months of skilled work and, not infrequently, a great deal of trial-and-error testing of new ideas, functions and game mechanics before a game successfully combines all these elements into a new experience.
A ‘match-3 game’ is a type of casual puzzle game where the player is required to find patterns on a seemingly chaotic board. The player then has to match three or more of the same type of game element on the game board and those matched elements will then disappear.
One variant of casual games are the so called ‘clicker’ games where the player can click on a group of adjacent game elements of a certain type and those will then be removed. Some clicker games only require two adjacent objects to remove those elements if clicked by the user.
Another type of match-3 games are the so called ‘switcher’ games where the player switches place on two adjacent game elements on the game board so that one or both of them create a chain of at least three adjacent game elements of the same type. Those matched game elements will then disappear. In a typical switcher game the game board will be repopulated with game objects from the top of the board with the physics of the game board being that the game pieces are falling downwards on the board.
Another type of match-3 game are the so called ‘shooter’ games where the player launches for instance a ball or bubble on to the game board tying to aim at groups of similar game elements already on the game board. If the launched ball hits or forms a group of more than 3 similar game elements then that group of game elements are removed fro the game board. In a typical shooter game the physics of the game board being that the game pieces are falling downwards on the board.
There are also other types of games where groups of certain game elements are combined together and removed when they have reached a certain size. The user can connect the groups with a swiping movement touching each of the connecting elements in one implementation and in another implementation the groups are formed to one group when the elements of the same type are adjacent, the player then removes the group for instance by clicking on that group.
This patent specification describes not only various ideas and functions, but also their creative expression. A portion of the disclosure of this patent document therefore contains material to which a claim for copyright is made and notice is hereby given: Copyright King.com Limited 2012 and 2013 (pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 401). A claim to copyright protection is made to all screen shots, icons, look and feel and all other protectable expression associated with the games illustrated and described in this patent specification.
The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but reserves all other copyright rights whatsoever. No express or implied license under any copyright whatsoever is therefore granted.
3. Discussion of Related Art
Casual social games have been implemented before and are known. However previous inventions have not successfully devised effective solutions to one or more of engagement, viralisation and monetisation in the same way as the present invention does.